Remember this!

We’ve been flying through Leviticus, Numbers, and now Deuteronomy pretty quickly, so let’s take a minute to catch up on some things than have happened in between: Miriam and Aaron both died shortly before Balaam’s donkey took up talking to him.  Miriam died in the desert, Aaron on a mountaintop. Aaron had been serving as [...]

It’s not about you.

That’s a popular phrase recently – “it’s not about you” – but it’s a pretty important thing to remember. Often, it just isn’t about us. Sometimes, occasionally, it is about us, and it’s good for us to be aware of when that’s true. But mostly, it’s about someone or something else. If only Moses had [...]

Whose story is it, anyway?

Ok, we’ve had weird and tricky stories already in the first few books of the Bible, and we’ll have more.  But usually the people whose job it is to think and write about these stories can at least agree on what the story is about. Numbers 12 is different.  Some people think it’s about prophecy [...]

Gold dust and swords

In my children’s Bible, when Moses comes down the mountain, he gets angry, grinds up the golden calf and makes the people drink the gold dust.  They are punished by losing all their gold stuff and having to drink dust. Then Moses goes up the mountain to ask God to forgive them. So I am [...]

What have you done for me lately?

In politics, if you want someone’s vote or support or money, you often have to make them promises. It doesn’t matter what you’ve already done for them – they want to know what you’re about to do for them. And certainly if you haven done anything for them for a little while, it doesn’t matter [...]

Great visual!

I often google our readings for interesting thoughts, questions, videos, art, poems, etc. to share here.  So I googled “first passover” – and one of the hits caught my attention.  Here’s what showed on the search page blurb: The First Passover – The Tenth Plague on Egypt The first Passover and the tenth plague on [...]

And so it begins

Here we go… the plagues.  Just to ease us gently into things, we’ll start with turning all the water to blood. Ew. Why do you think God started off with blood? Drama? Force? Symbolism? Why do you think the magicians turned more water into blood instead of turning it back?

Razzle dazzle

If a staff turned into a serpent at my feet, I think I would find that very convincing – this is someone who has power! It’s a miracle! I would be tempted to assume that this was God’s doing. The problem is, not every flashy miracle comes from God.  Like today, in this story – [...]